Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.“Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Luke 14:25-35
This can seem a little harsh, especially coming from Jesus. Jesus and his disciples are “on the road” to all the different towns they were visiting. Jesus was giving teachings and parables along the way. In this passage, Jesus had just gotten done talking about the different banquets and said, if you would invite people to a dinner party, “invite the poor, crippled, lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” This is a perfect example of the upside down Kingdom Jesus was casting vision for.
Not to be cliche but I think we so often forget the cost of following Jesus because we are simply doing it wrong. We are so easily stuck in our own ways of doing things or old habits that we get stuck. It makes me think of someone trying to ski or snowboard for the first time. I have taught many people over the years and it’s interesting to see the pattern. There are two different types of people I’ve seen. Those homies that happen to just be out there because everyone else is, they grabbed a rental board probably because of some peer pressure. They typically try it for that one day and don’t go much after that. Then there are the people who have to buy their own lift ticket, probably saved up the pennies to buy a board from the local thrift store, mostly those people stuck with it and got really into the sport. They had to contemplate the cost of what they were getting into. They had to actually think if it was worth their resources and time.
I guess it’s kind of like following Jesus. If we first don’t know what we are getting into, then we might fail. If we don’t feel the sacrifice of what it really means to follow Jesus, I don’t think we’ll be able to see the whole picture, or experience the fullness of what He has to offer.
It’s not quite as heavy as going against another country in war, or naively building a house, but you get the idea. Let’s be a people who create an environment of (genuine faith) saltiness, where we consider the cost of following Jesus so much that it leads to actually inviting the “poor” over for dinner.
Challenge
- When was the last time you stopped and considered the cost of something?
- Stop and reflect in your mind what it has cost you to follow Jesus. What things have you had to give up or leave behind since being a disciple of Jesus?
- Who can you invite to your dinner table this week? “Poor” can be someone you normally wouldn’t hang out with, or maybe it truly is someone who doesn’t have a place to eat a meal.
By Abigail Andridge|Whitefish, MT